The Wa people and their culture and history are attracting
increasing interest around the world. This introduction is intended
as a brief overview, which will suggest the rich potential of Wa
studies. It is by no means complete. What I offer is, first, a
brief introduction to the setting of the Wa, followed by a
discussion of the various sources for Wa studies and introduce some
of the recent developments in this field. My main goal is to
encourage more research into Wa culture, language, and history.

The Setting

The traditional homeland of the Wa people, about one million
people today, is located in the uplands of Southeast Asia, between
what today are the modern states of Burma (Myanmar) and China. In
his still very useful overview of the Wa language (Diffloth
1980),1 the linguist Gérard Diffloth
described this ancient land as the “Waic corridor” in between the
Salween and Mekong rivers, which they share with speakers of other
closely related Northern Mon-Khmer languages. Wa lands are located
in the mountainous region east of the Burmese cities of Mandalay
and Lashio, north of the former Shan realm of Kengtung, and west of
the Chinese tea town of Puer. This mountainous region is
crisscrossed by smaller rivers and valleys. Originally, the Wa were
self-sustaining agriculturalists rotating their fields on forested
mountain slopes and growing rice, millet, and many other crops. In
addition, they have long been engaged in trade with others in the
region, and especially since the 19th century also developed trade
in export items such as opium and mining products.

For centuries, the Wa lands were self-governed. Wa people
maintained their own autonomy under arms (guns, cross-bows,
fortifications, and so on), while engaging in trade and contact
with neighboring peoples. These include the Shan (or Tai, who are
known as Siam in the Wa language); the Lahu, a
Tibeto-Burman-speaking people arriving from the north in recent
centuries; the Chinese and the Burmese. All these neighboring
peoples typically recognize the Wa as the prior inhabitants of the
region, which agrees with widespread Wa oral traditions about
themselves as indigenous to the area and living there prior to all
others.

The Wa were not directly governed by other powers until the 20th
century. In the last years of the 19th century, the British and
Chinese empires initiated and then abandoned attempts to delineate
a border between each other’s empires. Numerous wars meant that an
international border was not agreed upon or demarcated between
Burma and China until the early 1960s. The new border split the
formerly independent Wa areas in the middle, and divided their
territories between the new modern nations of China and Burma,
respectively. Since this time, approximately a third of the million
or so Wa people are citizens of China and about two-thirds of
Burma. Even so, today most Wa are able to travel more or less
freely in their own ancient lands, across the border and
beyond.

The Wa are formally recognized in both Burma and China as an
ethnic minority officially entitled to limited autonomy. On the
China side, Ximeng and Cangyuan counties are recognized as
demographically dominated by the Wa, and according to the Chinese
system, ethnic Wa hold government posts there.

On the Burma side, the main Wa areas are today recognized as
Burma’s Special Region 2, frequently known in English as the Wa
State, and in Chinese, correspondingly, as Wa Bang. The word “bang”
is similar to one sense of the English word “state,” referring to
something less than a fully sovereign entity. The Wa State,
headquartered in Panghsang, also has ethnic Wa leaders, as well as
its own armed forces, the United Wa State Army (UWSA) created in
1989 after the demise of the China-sponsored Communist Party of
Burma (on UWSA, its political wing UWSP, and on the post-1989 Wa
State, see Kramer 2007; on the CPB, Lintner 1990). At
the Panghsang high school, four languages are taught: Wa, Chinese,
Burmese, and English; in addition, the Shan language is also used,
in and around the Wa State.

The Wa themselves would simply call their lands hag a diex
A...

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